So much for no tax increases on the middle class

dogtowner

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not that its even news, he's already done it, but he's certainly validated that this pledge is dead.

President Barack Obama said he is “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit.

Obama, in a Feb. 9 Oval Office interview, said that a presidential commission on the budget needs to consider all options for reducing the deficit, including tax increases and cuts in spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

“The whole point of it is to make sure that all ideas are on the table,” the president said in the interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “So what I want to do is to be completely agnostic, in terms of solutions.”


this is also a troubling statement

“Our real problem is not the spike in spending last year, or the lost, even the lost revenues last year, as significant as those are,” he said. “The real problem has to do with the fact that there is a just a mismatch between the amount of money coming in and the amount of money going out. And that is going to require some big, tough choices that, so far, the political system has been unable to deal with.”

Actually it is mainly due to his giant spike in spending which helped spike the unemployment rate which made the otherwise lost tax revenue all the more vexing.

So the choice is really rather simple, if you don't have the money, you DON'T spend anyway.
 
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BO lies more the Billybob ever did.

Yet many still believe in hope and change no matter the reality.

They must have some kind of mental disorder.
 
Actually it is mainly due to his giant spike in spending which helped spike the unemployment rate which made the otherwise lost tax revenue all the more vexing.

First off, I have no objection to deficit spending if it helps save or restore jobs that would otherwise be lost. But your claim is that the stimulus spending has made the unemployment higher. Can you tell me why you think this? It is completely counter intuitive to me.
 
read

"House Republican leader John Boehner has expressed skepticism about the Obama commission and has sought assurances from the White House that its makeup would be bipartisan and not predisposed to tax increases. The Ohio Republican said he is still considering whether to appoint members from his party to the panel after a Feb. 9 meeting with the president."

Aw, jeez....are there any instances where John Boner isn't considering heading-for-the-hills????
 
First off, I have no objection to deficit spending if it helps save or restore jobs that would otherwise be lost. But your claim is that the stimulus spending has made the unemployment higher. Can you tell me why you think this? It is completely counter intuitive to me.

because it helps the case they want? does not matter if it is backed with facts.
 
Actually it is mainly due to his giant spike in spending which helped spike the unemployment rate which made the otherwise lost tax revenue all the more vexing.

So the choice is really rather simple, if you don't have the money, you DON'T spend anyway.

So true. Check out the Great Depression of....1920. Never heard of it? Because it did not happen because government did nothing and our economy boomed. The Great Beck has been discussing this.

http://www.meltingpotproject.com/mpp/2009/02/the-great-depression-of-1920.html

Government involvement in the economy only makes things worse. FDR saw to it that the Great Depression lasted a decade longer than it should have by constantly intervening in the economy.

BO is sending into another depression that will last even longer.
 
First off, I have no objection to deficit spending if it helps save or restore jobs that would otherwise be lost. But your claim is that the stimulus spending has made the unemployment higher. Can you tell me why you think this? It is completely counter intuitive to me.


thats because you seem to think it was a stimulus pkg. it was anything but. unemployment shot to 10% from 7.5% after we were assured it would go no higher than 8%.

it doesn't take an abacus to figure this out.
 
First off, I have no objection to deficit spending if it helps save or restore jobs that would otherwise be lost.
The problem is mal-investments. By bailing out companies and industries that should otherwise fail, you are artificially propping up failure. Allowing companies to fail cleanses the economic system of mal-invenstments which are then replaced by more efficient and productive investments.

For a real world example, consider the massive success that VHS tapes had when they were first introduced. It gave rise to video rental giants like Blockbuster and Hollywood video.

As technology progressed, the VHS was replaced by DVD's and these companies managed to stay with the times and remained in business. Once the internet became fast enough, and computers powerful enough, for streaming video to become popular, new rental giants like Netflix, who revolutionized the industry by doing mail order DVD's and streaming online movies.

The dinosaur brick and mortar stores that used to employ people for video rental went out of business and those people are now employed somewhere else. Had government stepped in with bailouts and deficit spending to save those jobs, it would not have turned around the brick and mortar video rental industry, it would have only prolonged the inevitable closings at a massive cost to the taxpayer.

The biggest problem with propping up failed industries with government money is the fact that they will fail the moment that money is removed. That makes for a political third rail because the politician who concerns himself with the deficit spending, is praised by his side for wanting to end the deficit spending but attacked by his opponents for knowingly putting people out of work as a result of his actions.

His opponent, who wants to continue deficit spending to prop up a failure, is praised by his side for wanting to save jobs and attacked by the opposition for continuing the deficit spending.

Such circumstances make ending expensive government policies very difficult politically and more painful than if government had allowed nature to run its course without literally wasting all those precious funds.

*EDIT*

You might be interested in watching a short 7 min music video on my blog called fear the boom and bust, it is a lesson on the two competing economic theories. It is very educational, well made and incredibly accurate. It is not slanted on way or the other, the makers wanted to make it as fair as possible to the theories of both men and by all accounts, they accomplished that while still managing to make learning economic basics enjoyable.
 
Second, I don't mind paying more taxes.
Which means he doesn't mind forcing you to pay higher taxes.

Someone who isn't on his ignore list should remind Zen that there is no law against paying more than you owe in taxes, if he likes, he can donate his entire paycheck to Uncle Sam and not one of us will complain about him choosing to do so.
Sorry that you disagree... see you at the polls.
The philosophy of Might Makes Right.
 
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thats because you seem to think it was a stimulus pkg. it was anything but. unemployment shot to 10% from 7.5% after we were assured it would go no higher than 8%.

it doesn't take an abacus to figure this out.

It certainly does. Your argument is that the stimulus made more people unemployed because more people are unemployed now than we were expecting. Similar argument: I put in a lot of overtime recently on a project that I thought would take me one week to finish. Instead it took me two weeks. Does that mean that I shouldn't have worked overtime because it slows down the project?

It is easy to see how economists can underestimate how bad a recession is and predict less employment than we end up experiencing despite a stimulus. It is harder for me to see how spending raises unemployment on the short term as you claimed. How can creating jobs for people boost unemployment on the short term?
 
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